Joe Touch wrote:
> I don't believe in long-lived URLs; they're exactly as
> long-lived as the organization that they're registered with,
> and no more - in all cases.
You could _in theory_ create PURLs (P = persistent) with
redirections to the real URLs. When the real URL is modified
later you can change the content of the PURL to reflect this.
Of course that makes no sense if you don't think that the PURL
server lives longer than any affected real URL. And it's a
lot of work. But maybe less work than managing errata for all
broken URLs, e.g. PURL offers a link checker.
I used this trick to replace faqs.org by rfc-editor.org for
all http://purl.net/net/rfc/4234 (example) links I have.
For unknown reasons the plain text RfC links of faqs.org didn't
work anymore, therefore I wanted the "source". Later I found
that the search result of rfc-editor.org is even better, it
gives me the status and an abstract, therefore I changed the
one http://purl.net/net/rfc / "partial redirection" again.
With the desired effect for all old RFC links published by me.
Just an example - normally adding more sources of potential
errors is a bad plan, but in that case it did the trick, twice.
Bye, Frank